Law-Related Education to Address Everyday Legal Alienation: Education Supporting the Rule of Law in Japan.

This paper describes the current state of the rule of law in Japan, including secondary Law-Related Education（LRE）, which has received much attention in Japan in recent years.

According to the 2023 data, Japan ranks 14th out of 142 countries in the WJP Rule of Law Index. To maintain this ranking, LRE for citizens is necessary.

Japan's Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has been conducting LRE activities that emphasize the rule of law as a matter of policy. LRE aims to enable citizens who are not legal professionals to understand laws, the legal system, and the values that underlie them.

According to Fekete (2022), in a study by H. Szilágyi, " Not surprisingly, legal education as such has a prejudice taming impact and it also contributes to the strengthening of trust in judiciary in general." Thus, I believe that the rule of law and confidence in the judiciary can spill over from education.

Here, the author presents a case study of secondary school LRE she has practiced (a civil moot court based on a consumer law case) and describes the changes in students' legal consciousness.

The author compared the pre-survey administered before the class and the post-survey administered after the class to approximately 221 high school students who took the class from April to July 2024. Statistical data software was used to conduct a t-test of samples with corresponding analysis of variance.

The questionnaire included two questions used in the Civil Disputes Utilization Survey ("Do you agree or disagree with the idea that 'When you are involved in a dispute, your rights and freedoms are guaranteed by using the courts to resolve the case'?"，"Do you agree or disagree with the statement, 'I will use the law to realize my rights'?").

The results of the survey are presented in this paper.